Inquiry into Britain’s role leading to Iraq war to be released

CCTV News

It’s been seven years in the making, but finally an independent inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War is ready to deliver its findings.

In the U.K., most attention will be focused on what the report has to say about the motives of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and what was contained in email exchanges between Blair and former U.S. President George W. Bush.

CCTV’s Richard Bestic reported from London.

Inquiry into Britain’s role leading to Iraq war to be released

Inquiry into Britain’s role leading to Iraq war to be released

In the U.K., most attention will be focused on what the report has to say about the motives of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and what was contained in email exchanges between Blair and former U.S. President George W. Bush. CCTV’s Richard Bestic reported from London.

Britain’s role in the U.S. and former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s justification for military action is still a highly charged issue in the UK.

The justification at the time was that the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the West with weapons of mass destruction.

“If you are going to go to war you need a pretty high threshold, it seems to me, to decide on that,” Eliza Maningham-Buller, former Head of MI5 said. “And I think there is very few who would argue that the intelligence was not substantial enough on which to make that decision.”

As it was discovered after the invasion, Saddam didn’t have those weapons.

“The point I would emphasize to you, is that the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons’ capability – that threat is real,” Tony Blair, then U.K. prime minister said.

Seven years in the writing, at a cost of $15 million, the inquiry report was chaired by Judge Lord Chilcot, comprising more than 2.5 million words.

Regardless of how many words or how many years it took to put them together, the Chilcot report will never answer all the questions.